Duck and Cover…

I love me a good cover…when it’s done right. We do more than one in Strawfoot…

It’s interesting to hear another musician’s take on a song…it’s not coldplaying it so much as reinterpreting it…nobody’s claiming to have written something new…they’re just paying tribute, or in some cases, taking the piss on someone else.

Some are even better than the original…

There are different types of covers:

There’s the reinterpretation of a song, where an artist of a different genre takes a song and brings it into their style. The best example of this is Gin and Juice, by the Gourds. This is the song that got me into cover songs. I found it on napster, in its heyday. It was labeled as a song by Phish the first time I downloaded it, String Cheese Incident the second…it was months before I was able to determine it was by the Gourds. I love the gourds, their mandolin is awesome…

So, here’s the original version, in all it’s glory, to jog your memory.

And here’s how the Gourds did it.

This was so well done, that even Snoop dug it.

There’s a respectful, tributary cover that doesn’t stray too far from the original.

Here’s Bill Monroe, doing the song that got me into bluegrass and the mandolin…

and here’s Jack White doing it justice…I could do a whole post on this song alone…(and probably will)

And of course, thanks primarily to Weird Al, there is the parody video.

Here’s my all time favorite, Alanis Morissette taking the piss on Fergie.

Fergie in all her ridiculous Fergieness…

Alanis taking the piss…

I love all three types. Mind you, there are some covers that should never be made. They harbor on the shores of blasphemy and cause many a corpse to turn in their graves.

I won’t post such horrendous outrage here, but you can go here to see what Sheryl Crow did to this.

Word to the absurd.

Tags: alanis morissette, bill monroe, cover, fergie, gin and juice, gourds, guns n roses, jack white, music, sheryl crow, snoop dogg, song, strawfoot, video